Author: Buck

I use only 1:48 scale vehicles in my WWII games using Combat Patrol(TM).  I found 1:48 scale Bren carriers from Butler’s Printed Models.  Butler’s models, however, do not come with crews.  The only way to get crews that I found was to order the carriers and crews from Warlord.  (They don’t split up sets any more, apparently.)  So, I was stuck with some 1:56 carriers.  I was going to flea market them, but I thought that no one else would want Bren carriers without crews.  Then I thought that they might make interesting unmanned ground vehicles for science fiction games.  So out came the bits box…

So I found some old weapons, bits, and bobs, and began to glue these to the Bren carrier chassis.  Below you can see how they look before I will begin painting them.  The weapons are mounted with magnets so that they can be turned during a game.

I will post some pictures when they are painted and ready for a game.

Greg and I have run a couple of Sea Lion based skirmish games using Combat Patrol(TM).  I really like the early war periods, like Finland 1939, Poland 1939, and France 1940.  I have recently gotten excited about Sea Lion based hypothetical scenarios.  In the Sea Lion and Fall of France games we ran at Historicon, Greg provided all the British Regulars, and I provided the Home Guard.  I wanted to flesh out our force with some additional figures.

The Smith Gun is quite interesting.  I had never heard of it until a year or so ago, and during our recent trip to Tank Fest, I saw one in person at the Imperial War Museum.  It is a 6-lb gun.  You rolled it into position and then tipped it up on its side.  The axel then became the traverse mechanism.  The “top” wheel provided limited overhead protection.  This was the Home Guard’s only viable anti-tank capability in 1940.

Some months ago, I purchased several packs of Warlord and Footsore Home Guard figures.  I don’t know which are from which manufacturer.

Another early war weapon of the Home Guard was the Northover Projector.  It fired hand grenades, rifle grenades, and special incendiary bombs to be used against tanks.

The weapon was fired using black powder and percussion cap.  The anti-tank bombs were glass bottles.  When the bottle broke (presumably near the vision ports of a German tank) the phosphorus inside the bottle burst into flame and filled the crew compartment with noxious fumes.  The weapon cost less than ten pounds to build.

Warlord makes nice 28mm figures but 1:56 scale vehicles.  I used 1:48 scale vehicles.  I was able to find 1:48 Bren carriers from Butler’s Printed Models, but they didn’t come with crews.  Warlord used to break up their sets as special orders, but no longer.  I had to order a set of four 1:56 Bren carriers to get the crews and some dismounts.  The 28mm figures fit nicely in the 1:48 scale vehicles.  There are additional Brens on pintles to mount on the Bren carriers, but I am waiting for some very, very small rare-earth magnets to come in the mail to mount them.  I think I will also use them to put the figures into the Bren carriers if they are thin enough.

These are the dismounted figures that came with the set.  There are enough to make two squads / sections.

Finally, I ordered a set of Boys AT Rifle crews from Crusader Miniatures.  Together, I am starting to formulate a pretty good early war British force.

The event schedule for Barrage 2018 is filling up.  More games being added daily.  Don’t miss the best little convention on the East Coast.  Great games, great people, no politics.  Just dice, cards, and toy soldiers.

Take the day off Friday and start gaming at noon when the doors open.  Gaming goes until everyone tuckers out Saturday evening.

From Duncan Adams:

[Here are two long shots of the table to help provide context for Duncan’s narrative.]

These are two more items I purchased in the dealer hall at Historicon last weekend.  These are MDF vehicles.  They assembled very easily.  I have spray primed them with Army Painter Angel Green.  When the weather is good, I’ll break out the air brush and give them a nice camouflage pattern.

In the Historicon dealer hall, there was a vendor called Impudent Mortal.  I have purchased things from them before.  The Rust line included MDF buildings and terrain pieces that come with photo textured, self adhesive covers.  I picked up this set of terrain pieces from them and assembled them yesterday and today.

Another outfit I like is Things from the Basement.  Their MDF products are very reasonably priced, and they are very creative.  I saw this piece and had to have it.

Blood and Swash / Thunder and Plunder has been out of print for a couple of years.  I have just loaded it to War-games Vault for purchase as a pdf download.  There were a couple of games using these rules at Historicon, and before I even got home Chris had received in a inquiry how to get them.  These remain a very fun set of rules despite their age.  We have used them for their intended purpose (pirates) and also ancient skirmished to WWII.  Enjoy!

Tank ran a Bear Yourselves Valiantly game featuring Carthaginians versus Romans.

Tank also ran two iterations of his immensely popular brawl on a train using Blood and Swash.  I just love this game!

Dave ran two iterations of his Zulu ambush scenario using Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.  Dave is working on a British colonial supplement.

Chris ran a fantasy game using the under-development feudal version of Combat Patrol.

Title:  Rear Guard at Outpost Priebe

Rules: Star Wars Supplement for Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: Science Fiction – Star Wars

Description:  Clones are advancing toward the Republic base camp on the planet of Christophsis.  Supplies are running low and the Trade Federation is refusing to let any through to the Clone troopers.  Droid forces advance steadily.  Lieutenant Boomer and his Clone platoon conduct a delaying action at Outpost Preibe to give time for supplies and reinforcements to arrive.  Can Boomer hold long enough?

Greg and I ran our sixth game of Historicon Saturday evening.  We used a modification of the France 1940 scenarios we had run in the morning and afternoon.  We swapped out the terrain a bit and replaced the Germans with Droids and the British/French with clones.

I don’t have enough droid tanks to exactly replicate the earlier scenarios, so the droids had two tanks, and the clones had shoulder-fired AT rockets.

This was probably our least successful game of the weekend.  We are still struggling to get the balance right in these Clone Wars games.  Sometimes the clones just shred the droids and people complain.  Other times the droids don’t die fast enough, and the clone players complain.  We had a critical clone player who didn’t quite understand the activation sequence, and as a result the anti-tank rockets never really played a role.  The droid tanks shelled the clone positions with impunity.

The clones needed to draw in the droids.  Instead they sat on the roofs of the buildings and just got shelled over and over.  Lots of lessons experienced, but no lessons learned.  Had the clones dropped down behind the buildings out of sight, the droids would have been forced to advance to where the shoulder-fired rockets could have taken out the tanks and where the high rate of fire and accuracy of the clone small arms fire would have been decisive.